WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama signaled Sunday he will move urgently and aggressively to rescue the plunging economy, demanding swift passage by Congress of a massive two-year spending and tax-cutting recovery program. “We’re out with the dithering, we’re in with a bang,” a top Obama aide said.
Obama’s plans, outlined by his transition team on television talk shows, could put aside his campaign pledge to repeal a Bush tax cut for the wealthy. With the downturn in the economy, those tax cuts may remain in place until they are scheduled to die in 2011, said William Daley, an economic adviser. “That looks more likely than not,” he said.
Obama aides called on lawmakers to pass, by the Jan. 20 inauguration, legislation that meets Obama’s two-year goal of saving or creating 2.5 million jobs. Democratic congressional leaders said they would get to work when Congress convenes Jan. 6.
Though Obama aides declined to discuss a total cost, it probably would far exceed the $175 billion he proposed during the campaign. Some economists and lawmakers have argued for a two-year plan as large as $700 billion, equal to the Wall Street bailout Congress approved last month.
“I don’t know what the exact number is, but it’s going to be a big number. It has to be,” said Obama economic adviser Austan Goolsbee.
With the wounded economy worsening, the Obama team’s new assertiveness was a recognition he needed to soothe financial markets with signs of leadership. It also foreshadowed a more hands-on role by Obama to influence congressional action during the final weeks of the transition.
Obama will introduce his economic team today, including Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary and Lawrence Summers as head of the National Economic Council.
“We don’t have time to waste here,” Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said. “We want to hit the ground running on January 20th.” Echoing that, the second-ranking House Democrat, Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, said, “We expect to have during the first couple of weeks of January a package for the president’s consideration when he takes office.”
Obama’s team didn’t limit itself to the long-term economic recovery.
Axelrod warned automakers, seeking billions in government help to stave off collapse, to devise a plan to retool and restructure by next month. Otherwise, he said, “there is very little taxpayers can do to help them.”
The emphasis on the economy began Saturday when Obama outlined the framework of a plan to save or create 2.5 million jobs by the end of 2010. The scope of the recovery package is far more ambitious than what Obama had spelled out during his presidential campaign, when he proposed $175 billion of spending and tax-cutting stimulus.
The new one will be significantly larger and would incorporate his campaign ideas for new jobs in environmentally friendly technologies — the “green economy.” It also would include his proposals for tax relief for middle- and lower-income workers. But there were no plans to balance the tax cuts with an immediate tax increase on the wealthy.
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New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson tapped as commerce secretary.
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